Email Marketing

Outside of a website, most small businesses and professionals need to consider other mechanisms to engage customers and prospects in an effective and relevant manner. Email Marketing should be on the top of any to do list.  

Following practical steps in an Email Marketing System, you can maximize ROI from the program better than other marketing initiatives combined. So, how do you successfully reach the in boxes of your customers and help ensure they read your messages?

Retention and Acquisition Email Marketing Systems

The purpose of a retention email marketing system is to minimize current customer defection and derive additional revenue from current clients. This is called Customer Loyalty. The purpose of an acquisition email marketing system is to target potential customers who haven't done business with you before. The overall objective is to introduce your company and its products and services.  

Retention Email Marketing for Dummies explains that Retention Email Marketinghaving distinct email marketing systems will ensure you can take the customer through the life cycle: Prospect (plan to get them to buy), Customer (appreciate their business and increase awareness of other products and services), Repeater (encourage additional purchases via exclusive offers) and Disengaged (plan to win them back).

Design of Email Marketing Collateral

Understanding the audience will help you create content that speaks to the specific interests and needs of a target audience. The language, look and feel of your email campaign needs to be such that your audience identifies with the content in visually appealing arrangements. You must grab the attention of your readers in order to have them care about your message. Email marketing messages must enhance your brand identity. Brand identity makes your email recognizable to your audience and assures them that it comes from a trustworthy and familiar source. Match the format of the email to the content of the email. For example, an email message formatted as an announcement promotes a sense of urgency and may encourage the reader to read rather than skip over and come back to the message in their in box.

Crafting Email Marketing Collateral

Customers will not take action unless there is a strong need or desire to do so. When crafting your email collateral keep your audience's motivations in focus and offer authentic content. Ensure you guide your audience to the place they need to go to take action and make you money. Some other tips here include developing an interesting Subject Line. Choose the purpose of every email carefully: Promotional (Act Now), Informational (Educate), Procedural (Welcome) or Relational (Appreciation).

Deliverability

Segmenting your contact list is essential as the spray and pray tactic it not generally acceptable or effective with Email Marketing. Adapting your campaigns to various segments based on behavioural or demographic characteristics can result in better responses to your program. The most important tip – Test Your Campaign.

Analytics

Interpreting your campaign results takes practice. One of the most valuable features of an Email Marketing system is the ability to view tracking reports to determine what your audience is doing with your email after you send it. The data contained in an email marketing report includes: delivered, bounced, opens, click throughs, forwards, unsubscribe and marked as spam statistics.

Email Marketing Do's and Don'ts

Do use a real name in the "From" line
Do use your logo in the upper tier of every email
Do offer a clear opportunity for subscribers to unsubscribe
Do include web links to limit the length of the email
Do engage your audience first with a one-to-one email of introduction

Do not harvest email addresses
Do not send messages without explicit consent
Do not use excessive promotion
Do not offer incentives for forwarding to a friend
Do not forget to include a real physical address

Vicadea Concepts provides analytic services to help you make sense of what is working in your email campaign and more importantly, what might not be working. We also offer design services, content writing and maintenance packages.